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How Mindful Awareness and Psychological Distress Influence Mother-Infant Bonding and Maternal Perceptions of Infant Temperament

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Abstract

Objectives

Maternal prenatal depression and anxiety have far-reaching consequences including disruptions to mother-infant bonding and possible impacts on the mother’s perceptions of her infant’s temperament. Emerging evidence suggests that dispositional mindful awareness may attenuate the effects of maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms in the perinatal period, from conception through to 1 year postpartum. This prospective study aimed to assess whether dispositional mindful awareness moderates the influence of prenatal anxiety and depressive symptoms on maternal perceptions of infant temperament and mother-infant bonding.

Methods

Across the perinatal period, 149 mothers completed two online surveys assessing: during pregnancy—dispositional mindful awareness, depression, anxiety; and at 3–6 months postpartum—maternal perceptions of infant temperament and the developing mother-infant bond.

Results

Analyses indicated that greater dispositional mindful awareness was negatively associated with prenatal depression and anxiety, and positively associated with the quality of mother-infant bonding, but not perceptions of infant temperament. Mindful awareness moderated the relationship between depressive symptoms and mother-infant bonding. For mothers with lower mindful awareness, the inverse association between depressive symptoms and mother-infant bonding remained strong, yet for mothers with higher mindful awareness, the adverse impact of depressive symptoms on mother-infant bonding was attenuated.

Conclusions

These results highlight the potential importance of developing higher levels of mindful awareness as a protective factor during pregnancy, and particularly for helping mitigate the adverse impact of maternal depression on the mother-infant bonding process.

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Data Availability

The data from this research are not publicly available as ethics approval for this was not granted at the time of initial approval. The corresponding author can be contacted for any data-related matters.

References

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Funding

Hayley McDonald is the recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award. Nadine Kasparian is the recipient of a National Heart Foundation of Australia Future Leader Fellowship (101229) and support from the Heart Institute Research Core (HIRC) at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. This research did not receive project grant funding from agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

HMM: designed and executed the study, and led the data analyses and write up of the manuscript; KAS: designed the study, assisted with the execution of the study, data analyses, write up and editing of the final manuscript; NAK: assisted with the design of the study and write up and editing of the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hayley M. McDonald.

Ethics declarations

Ethics Approval

This study was approved by the institutional human research ethics board (Macquarie University Human Research Ethics Committee: HREC5201500344).

Informed Consent

This study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

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McDonald, H.M., Sherman, K.A. & Kasparian, N.A. How Mindful Awareness and Psychological Distress Influence Mother-Infant Bonding and Maternal Perceptions of Infant Temperament. Mindfulness 13, 955–966 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01848-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01848-0

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